


Wanderlust

by ariel2me



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 10:06:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7680250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Above all, Lyarra wanted to belong. She craved security, the sense of the ground planted firmly beneath her feet. The daughter of two restless souls, Lyarra Stark needed a respite from all that restlessness and disquiet, from a life constantly in flux, from beating hearts always yearning for the unreachable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wanderlust

Above all, Lyarra wanted to belong. She craved security, the sense of the ground planted firmly beneath her feet. The daughter of two restless souls, Lyarra Stark needed a respite from all that restlessness and disquiet, from a life constantly in flux, from beating hearts always yearning for the unreachable.

Love brought her father and mother together. Love was also what kept them apart; love of a different sort, her father’s lifelong love affair with grand quests and adventures. Bold and adventurous Rodrik Stark married the bold and fierce daughter of a Flint from high up the mountain in a tale of romance fit for the storybooks, and then he left her behind in the lowland to tend to home, hearth and the children while he travelled the world searching for more grand adventures. Lyarra watched as her mother’s spirit sank lower and lower, as the years passed and the life she was living bore little resemblance to the one she thought she would be living. The air was supposed to be thinner high up the mountain, but down here was where Arya Flint could barely breathe.

The Starks were of the north and they prided themselves on being different from those of the south, but there were northerners and then there were __northerners__ , and the Flints were a different breed of northerners altogether. The ways of the Starks felt almost as alien and alienating to Arya Flint as the ways of the southerners did to the Starks.

Lyarra fell in love with Winterfell from an early age. They were Starks by name and by their father's blood, Lyarra and her sister, but not Starks of Winterfell, not the daughters of the Lord and Lady of Winterfell. The castle enchanted her, the castle and everything it stood for. Her sister dreamed of escaping - from the bone-chilling coldness of the north, from the frosty quarrels of their parents on the rare occasions their father was actually home - but Lyarra dreamed only of Winterfell, of the family living there whose life she was convinced was miles better than her own. They _belonged_ , the Starks of Winterfell,  even Lady Stark who was not a Stark by birth, who had been as much a stranger to her new home as Lyarra's mother had been.

"Do you wish that I am more like her?" her mother asked, one day. Guilt assailed Lyarra. She kissed her mother's hand, smiled her brightest smile and lied. "No, of course not, Mother." After that, she stopped building snow castles resembling Winterfell, stopped remarking to her mother how lively and beautiful Lady Stark looked in this or that gown, how gracious Lady Stark was to her servants, how calm and composed Lady Stark was when dealing with recalcitrant petitioners.

"We only see Lady Stark at her best, because we are strangers to her," pointed out Lyarra's elder sister.

"We are still family, of sort, are we not?"

"Not really," Branda said. "You should know that by now."

* * *

He called her ' _Aunt Lyarra'_ to tease her, though she was not really his aunt, only a cousin once removed, and exactly his own age besides. She played along with his game, playfully scolding him for missing his lessons, speaking to him in a mock-stern voice that winter is coming and that he is neglecting his duty to prepare his lands and his people for it. He affected a contrite expression, falling down on his knees and declaring that he was ready to receive his just punishment.

Rickard's visit to her home increased in frequency after the death of his mother. A growth in her breast took Marna Locke's life, the plump Lady Stark reduced to skins and bones by the end of her illness. She died cradled in her son's arm, the son who had been born a frail, sickly babe not expected to live, the babe she had nursed back to life herself. Mother's milk was what saved him when all the maester's potions failed, so the story went.

"How could it be," he said, disbelievingly, "how could it be that something so life-giving could turn into a cruel, monstrous killer?"

She held him while he wept and never spoke a word of false comfort. "It will hurt," she told him, "it will hurt for a long time."

* * *

 Branda found her own tale of romance fit for the storybooks, a knight from the stormlands she saved from drowning in an icy lake.

"Have you learned nothing from Mother and Father?" Lyarra screamed, trying to stem her tears from falling. "You'll be a stranger in a strange land, just like Mother. You'll be just as miserable, grow just as tired and disillusioned as her."

"Harold is not Father," Branda said gently, but determinedly.

* * *

Lord Stark spoke of bringing the two branches of House Stark together through marriage. Her father nodded enthusiastically, while her mother stared daggers at him. "Let's see what Lyarra has to say about it first," Arya Flint declared, ignoring Lord Stark's incredulous look and her husband's angry frown. " _We_ chose, for good or ill. Would you deny our daughter the same?"

* * *

"Are you certain?"

Lyarra nodded.

"Is this truly your wish?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Not because you're afraid of disappointing your father?"

Lyarra shook her head, impatiently. Oh how could her mother have been so blind? It was everything she ever dreamed of, offered to her on a silver platter.

"Marrying Rickard for Winterfell and what it stands for -"

"Do you think so ill of your own daughter? I am fond of him. You know that truly, Mother. I will make him a good wife."

"Merely fond?"

"Very fond. As he is of me."

_You married for love, Mother. How much joy have you had of that?_

Those words remained unspoken by Lyarra, but not unheard by her mother. "You must be careful, Lyarra. You must be careful that you are not making a bigger mistake of your own while trying so hard not to repeat what you see as your mother's mistake."

"Was it a mistake, then? Well and truly?"

Her mother looked sad beyond reckoning, caressing Lyarra's cheek. "I am a mother. How could it be a mistake, when it brought me my two beloved daughters, more precious to me than any lover could ever be? And yet I am also a woman. How could it not be a mistake, when a union that began with so much hope and promise now feels like a cold, endless journey? There is no answer. There is no answer that will not make me feel that I am betraying someone, either myself or my daughters."

"You could leave him. You could return to your home. After my wedding, both your daughters will have homes of our own. You will not be abandoning us."

"And how would Lord Stark and his heir feel about that? The mother of the future Lady of Winterfell leaving her husband, who is their own kin by blood? Would you not be paying the price for my folly, for they certainly would see it as that, and as a dishonor to their House."

"Not Rickard. I will make him see. I will make him understand," Lyarra said fervently. Perhaps it was not too late, not too late for her mother to still snatch some measure of happiness. She remembered the laughing woman who regaled her with tales of giants and grumpkins when she was a little girl, the exhilarated rider who rode her horse with joy, not with her later desperation, holding on to the rein so tightly as if afraid that her horse was about to bolt, leaving her behind just like her husband did. 

"He is still a Stark, your Rickard, fiercely proud of the honor of his house."

"Mother, I -"

"Never mind about me. If it was a mistake marrying your father, then it was a mistake I made myself. Even if I regretted that, I never regretted having the chance to choose. What about you, Lyarra? What do you choose?"

"Rickard," she said. And Winterfell, Winterfell and everything it stood for, she did not say. 

 


End file.
